A Linguistic Geography of Africa (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact)

Greater than 40 years in the past it was once verified that the African continent will be divided into 4 targeted language households. examine on African languages has therefore been preoccupied with reconstructing and realizing similarities throughout those households. This has intended that an curiosity in other forms of linguistic courting, equivalent to no matter if structural similarities and dissimilarities between African languages are the results of touch among those languages, hasn't ever been the topic of significant learn. This publication exhibits that such similarities throughout African languages are extra universal than is greatly believed. It offers a extensive viewpoint on Africa as a linguistic region, in addition to an research of particular linguistic areas. with the intention to have a greater knowing of African languages, their constructions, and their heritage, additional info on those contact-induced relationships is vital to realizing Africa's linguistic geography, and to reconstructing its historical past and prehistory.

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1); we are going to go back to this factor in part 2. four. moreover, there's a grammaticalization procedure regarding verbs for ‘say’ that are extensively grammaticalized to quotatives, complementizers, function clause markers, and so on. (Larochette 1959; Meeussen 1975: three; Gilman 1986: forty four; Gu¨ldemann 2001). besides the fact that, this grammaticalization seems to be additionally quite universal outdoors Africa (see Ebert 1991; Heine & Kuteva 2002). Body-part phrases used metaphorically for deictic spatial differences are came across through the international; for instance, nouns for the physique half ‘back’ are the conceptual resource for spatial phrases for ‘behind’ in such a lot languages. yet this 26 Bernd Heine and Zelealem Leyew basic grammaticalization strategy seems to be extra universal in Africa than in different places, and there are a few advancements which are more likely to take place in Africa yet not likely to ensue in other places (Meeussen 1975: three; Gilman 1986: 42). Such advancements comprise, yet should not limited to, the grammaticalization of physique elements for ‘stomach/belly’ to spatial techniques for ‘in(side),’ or of ‘buttocks/anus’ to ‘below’ and/or ‘behind’ (Heine 1997: 37ff. ). additionally, intercourse differences used for the grammaticalization of the spatial thoughts ‘right’ (< ‘male, robust hand’) and ‘left’ (< ‘female, susceptible hand’) were proposed as pan-African gains (Gilman 1986: 42), yet such metaphorical transfers are certainly not restrained to Africa. extra grammaticalization strategies frequent in Africa contain the use of nouns for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as attributive or derivational markers for intercourse differences (cf. Gilman 1986: 42), wherein, for instance, the noun for ‘girl’ is traditionally a ‘woman baby’ and ‘bitch’ a ‘woman puppy. ’ ultimately, the grammaticalization of nouns for ‘body’ to reflexive markers has additionally been proposed as characterizing universal African conceptualization tactics (Gilman 1986: forty two; Heine 2000) yet, once more, it is a procedure that's in no way constrained to Africa. 2. three. three end The houses which have been mentioned during this part can have given an impact of the type of structural features to be anticipated in African languages. it will appear that they are often categorised into the next different types: (8) houses that appear to be basically constrained to Africa: a. clicks b. labial flaps c. various kinds of vowel concord (described via Clements and Rialland in bankruptcy three) d. ideophones expressing colour differences e. case inflections expressed completely via tone (so a long way in simple terms present in African languages, all the marked-nominative style; see bankruptcy eight) f. loss of compulsory contract of transitive verbs with their item (see bankruptcy four) (9) homes which are enormously extra universal in Africa than in different places. those are homes which are typologically extraordinary, yet lots of them are both genetically or areally limited of their incidence: a. labial-velar stops b. implosives, which Clements and Rialland (this quantity, bankruptcy three) outline as non-obstruent stops Is Africa a linguistic zone?